Article
Mobility in a global city: Making sense
of Shanghai’s growing automobiledominated transport culture
Urban Studies
1–16
Ó Urban Studies Journal Limited 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0042098016637568
usj.sagepub.com
Matthew Williams
United Nations University, International Institute for Global Health, Malaysia
Non Arkaraprasertkul
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Abstract
Shanghai continues to position itself as the financial capital of the Chinese mainland economy. The
concomitant explosion in wealth, the increasing penetration of consumer culture, the inmigration of vast numbers of non-Shanghainese to the city seeking work and the dispersal of the
city to the periphery all have significant implications for mobility. This research poses three questions: 1) How do people move around Shanghai? 2) Why do they move in this way? 3) How does
this choice of mobility impact on their being and sense of agency? Adopting a qualitative methodology, we approach mobility as a cultural phenomenon and seek to uncover the meanings that
car drivers and transit riders attach to mobility and how this impacts their life and their experience of Shanghai. We found that in spite of the fact that Shanghai now has the most extensive
metro system in the world, there is a growing materially, culturally and socially embedded automobile culture. The car has a resilient symbolic appeal for the residents of Shanghai. While the
automobile is enabling in some routine functions of daily life, collectively it has diminished the
agency of people in Shanghai. Congestion, pollution and psychosocial pressure to buy a car portend a socially unsustainable system of mobility. While the metro enables vast numbers of individuals to perform the functions of daily life, it is becoming overcrowded and is associated with the
spatial and class-based segregation of people.
Keywords
car culture, mobility, Shanghai, urbanisation, urbanism
Received May 2015; accepted February 2016
Introduction
Shanghai is China’s most economically
viable city. With its increasing global influence on the service-sector economy, both
Chinese people and foreigners are moving to
Corresponding author:
Matthew Williams, United Nations University, International
Institute for Global Health, Federal Territory of Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.
Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
2
Urban Studies
Shanghai for its economic opportunities.
The population of China’s largest city officially stands at 24.15 million and counting
(according to Shanghai Statistics Bureau, as
cited in China Daily Online, 2014; The
Economist, 2015b). Since the early 2000s, the
boundary of the city has been expanded to
cover a much larger area, and the diversely
themed so-called ‘new towns’ have been continually built around the original centre (see
Chen, 2009; den Hartog, 2010). Like many
other large cities, the centre has become the
hub for economic transactions, while the
areas surrounding it have the structural
responsibility of accommodating the people
who are travelling to the centre on a daily
basis for work.
This macro urban economic planning
seems to be the logic of the global service
economy model: to reserve the central city
area, with its state-of-the-art infrastructure,
for business and the demographic class who
have the capital to afford the premium
prices of the prime real estate, often associated with both convenient access to the best
infrastructure, as well as the socio-cultural
status it confers (Harvey, 2008). What this
means for mobility in a large city like
Shanghai is that every morning and evening,
about 60% of the city’s residents are moving
into and out of the city for work (den
Hartog, 2010). In other words, most of the
residents of Shanghai experience on a regular basis the most massive, intense and
often-uncomfortable temporary migration,
which occurs during the eight-hour interval
of their white/blue collar life circle. Hence,
the principal questions for our research are:
First, given the circumstances described
above, how do people move around the
city?; and, second, why do they move in this
way?
Our third research question is, how does
the intense daily commute of Shanghai residents affect their being and sense of agency?
Given the narrative of this paper, an apt
metaphor here may be cars on the road. For
example, if someone gets caught in a traffic
jam, not only is that person an element of
the congestion itself, but they are also their
own agent to decide how they would like to
deal with the distress of getting stuck on the
road. The driver could turn on a radio, could
call someone on their cellphone or could
grudgingly complain about lost time. In
other words, the driver has their own agency,
but it is limited by the structure of the system
of which they are inherently a part. That is
to say, how do the millions of car owners
and transit riders deal with the intense congestion on the roads and the overburdening
of the public transportation system on a
daily basis just to get to and from work?
Literature and theoretical
discussion
To begin to explore these questions, it is useful to frame Shanghai’s economic ascendancy and its implications for daily
transport, but especially car ownership, in a
number of interdependent contexts: the rise
of the middle class in the global South, the
aspirational consumption of this rising class
and the symbolism with which they imbue
the motor car. Underpinning this is an
expanding global neoliberal economic paradigm and culture. The irony of this economic paradigm being embraced by the
Chinese Communist Party is not unfamiliar
to Chinese scholars, and indeed to general
readers.
As early as 2003, Myers and Kent noted
that in 20 middle-income countries, there
was a burgeoning class of one billion new
consumers ‘with an aggregate spending
capacity, in purchasing power parity terms,
to match that of the US’ (Myers and Kent,
2003: 4963). These countries constitute the
newer members of the OECD and include,
for example, China, India, Mexico, Poland
and Turkey. The Brookings Institution
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
(2010) estimates that today 28% of the
world’s population is middle class, but that
by 2022 it will surpass 50%, and by 2030 it
will be two-thirds (Kharas and Gertz, 2010).
This rise of the middle class is associated
with a marked geographical redistribution
from West to East, with most of the new
middle class today residing in Asia.
Furthermore, Asia’s share of the global middle class may increase to more than twothirds from just over a quarter today, and
China’s middle class market is likely to
become the largest middle class market by
2020, overtaking the US, which will then be
taken over by India’s middle class market in
the decade that follows (Kharas and Gertz,
2010). As McMichael (2009: 2) notes, ‘the
symbols of their affluence [the new middle
class] are car ownership and meat consumption’. Over the past decade, private vehicle
ownership in Mumbai has increased 57% as
its growing middle class rush to buy cars
(Karkaria, 2014). So ubiquitous is the car in
cityscapes across the world that the accouterments of the car dominate our built environment (car parks, petrol stations, traffic
signals, roads and highways; see Freund and
Martin, 1996: 4). This ‘accommodation’ of
the private automobile has led to the physical and indeed psycho-social transformation
of cities, beginning in the second half of the
20th century, so that as Miller (2001:1)
argues ‘The relationship of much of humanity to the world became increasingly
mediated . by a single machine – the car’.
The preponderance of the automobile has
spawned a body of social science literature
attempting to unspool its resilient symbolism
(Featherstone, 2004; Lutz and Fernandez,
2010; Miller, 2001; Sheller, 2004; Sheller and
Urry, 2000, 2006; Urry, 2006). In particular,
Urry (2006: 18) argues that automobility is
‘the major item of individual consumption
after housing which provides status to its
owner/user through its sign-values (such as
speed, home, safety, sexual desire, career
3
success, freedom, family, masculinity,
genetic breeding)’. Sheller (2004: 228) moves
beyond conceptualising the car as an aspirational consumer good, and emphasises the
need to understand the affective dimension
of driving in order to translate this knowledge into more efficacious efforts to displace
entrenched car cultures. She argues that the
private automobile is so ubiquitous in our
culture that we actually experience the world
through the car via our aural, visual, olfactory, proprioceptive and what Sheller (2004)
calls ‘interoceptive’ senses. Indeed, several of
our interviewees spoke of the particular feelings of power and freedom they experienced
behind the wheel (see Findings section for
an explication of these feelings). Sheller and
Urry (2006) refer to the emergence of a ‘new
mobilities paradigm’, which specifically
grounds understandings of automobility in
the social sciences, attempting to understand
the purposes of mobility for work, pleasure
and travel. They argue that as we live in
automobilised societies, the social sciences
and urban analyses can usefully provide
insights into how cars shape urban life
(Sheller and Urry, 2006: 8). Our own
approach to investigating and theorising
about Shanghai’s car culture, and wider
transport culture, operates from such a
social science paradigm, seeking to unravel
the meanings behind the ownership of a car
in Shanghai.
In urban China, the site of our own
research, recent social science literature on
car consumption and driving renders vivid
insights into how the car is collectively imagined and deployed in the iterative routines
of quotidian life (i.e. Barmé, 2002; Hessler,
2010; Zhang, 2009). For example, Zhang’s
(2009: 193) extensive ethnography of automobility in Guangzhou underscores how in
contemporary China the automobile conspicuously marks the economic status of the
individual or family. Within the law profession, he reveals, ‘car ownership is at least a
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
4
Urban Studies
peer review standard among the lawyers’
and clients frequently make assumptions
about a lawyer’s competence by the car he/
she drives (Zhang, 2009:195).
In Shanghai, one of the most intriguing
issues for us is the fact that the demand for
car ownership is extremely high despite its
state-of-the-art – and, needless to say, the
world’s most extensive – metro transit system. In any other city, there seems to be a
correlation between the amount of government investment in public transportation
and reduced rates of private vehicle ownership. Additionally, in those cities, private
vehicle ownership is further discouraged by
extra mechanisms of control such as traffic
congestion fees, license plate bidding, exponential fees for public parking spaces and so
on. Apart from parking fees, these instruments of control seem to have the opposite
effect in Shanghai. While the investment in
public transportation is unsurprisingly
among the world’s largest – US$150 billion
as of 2015 – and the mechanisms of control
remain comprehensive, private vehicle ownership continues to skyrocket. According to
data from the China Association of
Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), total
car sales in China up to the last quarter of
2014 rose 6.6 percent to nearly 19 million
units. This rate represented half of the
13.9% increase in 2013 from the previous
year because of tighter government controls,
according to the CAAM (China Association
of Automobile Manufacturers, 2014).
Nevertheless, vehicle sales for the next few
years are expected to remain strong and to
increase. In Shanghai itself in 2014, according to the Shanghai Bureau of Statistics,
there were 2,550,900 cars – more than 10 %
of the private automobile population nationwide – which represents an 8.5% increase
from the previous year. 1,834,300 of these
were private vehicles, representing an
increase of 12.3% from previous years.
Shanghai citizens pay a very high price
for a license plate (sometimes even more
than for the new car itself) just so that they
can own a car. This despite the fact that the
Shanghai subway system is the world’s best
in terms of its length and network – at 588
kilometers as of 2014, and, according to the
Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, a stateowned enterprise responsible for this particular mode of transit, it is slated to expand to
804 kilometers by 2020 (Railway Gazette,
2010; Swanson, 2015). To put it in perspective, the network will be double the length of
the London Underground in 2020. Despite
the system’s impressive plan, the expansion
of the metro seems to go hand-in-hand with
the process of spatial and class-segregation.
In fact, as a recent study of car ownership
has shown, owning a car in Shanghai is not
just expensive – it is, in fact, the most expensive city in the world in which to own a car
according to the Purchasing Power Parity
(or PPP) index (as reported in the Economist,
2013). According to this study, the cost of
owning a brand new private automobile in
Shanghai is the world’s highest, both before
and after combining the purchase price of
the private automobile (on average
US$125,000) and the running costs associated with it for the first three years (on average US$20,000), such as road taxes,
registration fees, mandatory service without
major repairs, insurance and petrol consumption at the rate of 12.4km/litre. This is
puzzling given that the cost of living as well
as the average income in Shanghai cannot, in
any way, be compared to those of other
major cities on the index’s list such as New
York, London and Tokyo, where the cost of
owning a car is just a fraction of Shanghai’s.
In addition, Shanghai’s high price tag for car
ownership does not take into account the
cost of the license plate and parking. License
plates (chepai) sold through government auctions can cost as much as CNY100,000 or
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
US$16,000.00 as of the first quarter of 2015
(Lu, 2014).
Methodology
Traditionally, studies of transportation as
well as treatment of the problem of automobility have originated from engineering,
transport economics, transport infrastructure
and
land
use
perspectives.
Consequently, their focus has been on how
to manage traffic. While such approaches
offer a valid and insightful paradigm for
understanding motorisation, this paradigm
reduces the car to an item with both use and
exchange value, which is the end product of
a production chain (Kopytoff, 1986). This
can be contextualised within the westerninspired modernist framework of development popular in the second half of the 20th
century and replicated by many non-western
countries with the support of the World
Bank and the Asian Development Bank,
especially in the transport sector. The resulting explanation is that growth in incomes
leads to growth in motorisation, as consumers make independent choices within a
free-market economic system (Dargay et al.,
2007). Townsend (2003) notes that there is
also ‘a concept of linear technological
change which is in the public interest, and
which is inevitable and value-free’. The
problem is, however, that such a framework
excludes understandings of the automobile
as a ‘culturally marked’ product (Kopytoff,
1986: 64).
Following the recent social science turn in
mobility studies discussed in the previous
section, this study in Shanghai also consciously moves away from transport enclave
debates around transport and automobility
and adopts a qualitative approach, because
such an approach acknowledges that people
bring meaning to phenomena in their life.
That is, the residents of Shanghai (both local
Shanghainese and in-migrants) attribute
5
meanings to car ownership, rendering it a
cultural artefact.
Epistemologically, this approach is interpretivist, that is it involves an ontological
inquiry into the process of ascribing meaning to phenomena by social actors in the
world (Bryman, 2001; Denzin and Lincoln,
2005). As such, the meanings attributed to
the car in Shanghai are continuously created
by car owners, aspiring car owners, car corporations and their marketing departments,
as well as government investment in the
automobile industry. Interpretivism is also
aligned with phenomenology. According to
Schwandt (as cited in Denzin and Lincoln,
2005: 297), ‘phenomenological analysis is
principally concerned with understanding
how the everyday, intersubjective world (lifeworld) is constituted’. Ideas and beliefs are
generated and sustained through the interactions between people (David, 2004: 40). The
process of making meaning, then, is always
social. Our study is philosophically influenced by the interpretivist and phenomenological paradigm, as it focuses on what car
ownership and transit usage means for the
residents of Shanghai, and how the attribution of these meanings involves a set of
social actors.
In this research, we combine the expertise
of the two principal investigators: the sociology of public health, and urban anthropology and urban development and planning,
together with long-term on-site research in
Shanghai, which has been our research place
of residence since 2011 and 2013, respectively. In order to understand the social
meanings attributed to car ownership but
also transit patronage in Shanghai, the primary research method that we used was
qualitative interviews with a total of 100
participants. Quantitative analysis, while
offering its own useful understandings, fails
to capture rich discursive data that in-depth
interviews often unearth. For example, relying on statistical analysis alone, one could
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
6
Urban Studies
easily draw the conclusion from looking at
the expansiveness of Shanghai’s metro system that the system must be efficient. Openended interviews, however, reveal other
meanings. As one of our informants has
shared with us, ‘the fact that Shanghai
Metro is the world’s largest system does not
really mean anything to me’, he said.
‘Nobody wants to be packed like sardines in
the metro, but do I have any other options?
Of course if I have money, I will buy a car
too’, he emphasised. In other words, without
understanding the experience of the riders
themselves, it would be impossible to understand the residents’ aspirations to own private vehicles, an insight which is crucial to
policy-making.
The interviewees were all local Chinese
people
(Shanghainese
and
nonShanghainese) and were contacted through
our own professional and personal networks. The interview group included males,
females and individuals of varying ages,
occupations and education backgrounds. As
our main focus was car ownership, however,
the greater proportion were middle class
professionals, those most likely to be able to
afford cars. Believing their own names are
too hard for foreigners to pronounce,
Chinese people often assign themselves
English nicknames. As such, where an
English name is quoted, it was the interviewees themselves who provided that name.
The interviews were conducted in Mandarin
and/or English (one researcher speaks fluent
Mandarin, and the other basic Mandarin, so
often the English language interviews were
allocated to the latter researcher). The more
educated interviewees (often car owners) frequently spoke enough English to comfortably participate in interviews and to elaborate
on specific meanings. The location of the
interviews varied according to the exigencies,
and sometimes spontaneity, of each situation: workplaces, cafes, in the owner’s car,
in residential alleyway house courtyards,
riding the metro and even at sporting events.
Where feasible, we sought to interview the
person in situ, at a time or place where they
were using their particular mode of transport, in order to better understand the function and meaning of that transport mode in
their daily life.
Another set of challenges posed by generations of social scientists studying China
is, precisely, the complex layers of social
meanings, and how various groups interpret
them (Kopytoff, 1986). One of the ways of
thinking about it is in the discourse of ‘face
value’ (or mianzi) (Column 2, Figure 1), or
the idea that maintaining the reputation of
an individual in his/her circle of acquaintances, no matter how superficial that reputation may seem, often trumps most forms
of economic rationality. Well-known traditional examples include big banquets, exquisite gift-giving, as well as ritual ceremonies
such as a weddings, annual ancestral worship and so on, in which the entire family
would pool all their available resources to
put on a performance that the family is
‘prosperous’ (see Smart and Zhang, 2006).
Owning a car may have much symbolic resonance for an individual’s circle of acquaintances, signifying that the individual is ‘well
off enough’ to be able to afford an important status symbol. The importance of this
‘face value’ (mianzi) should not be reduced
to a simplistic notion of the individual being
economically unreasonable, given how much
we have learned about the history of intimate social relations in traditional Chinese
society (see Wank, 1996; Yan, 1996; Yang,
1994). Traditional economic understandings
of transport choices cannot capture such significant socio-cultural nuance.
In the fashion of anthropological
research, our interviews have enabled us to
gain access to responses that were not official (guanfang), or a standard set of answers
commonly used in maintaining the informant’s ‘face value’ (mianzi). Drawing on the
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
7
Investment in Mass
Transit
Designation of the Auto
Industry as a Pillar
of Chinese Economy
Figure 1. A conceptual framework of Shanghai’s automobile-dominated transport culture and its impact
on being / agency.
interview data to articulate the meanings of
car ownership in Shanghai, this material is
put in counterpoint with bigger questions
about mobility and transport in the city.
Findings
Given Shanghai’s growing wealth as the
financial centre of the mainland economy, its
residents increasingly move around the city
by private automobile, but also by metro,
bus, motorcycle, taxi, bicycle and on foot
(Column 3, Figure 1). We found that as a
means of quotidian transport, car ownership
was, not surprisingly, highly valued. Within
the overall transport culture of Shanghai, we
identified a very resilient culture of car consumption, which is socially, materially and
culturally embedded.
We found that our interviewees in
Shanghai own or often aspire to own cars
for symbolic reasons, and, to a lesser degree,
for pragmatic reasons. This we refer to as
the ‘socio-material’ expression of mobility
needs (Column 3, Figure 1), which indicates
that the material or utilitarian expression of
mobility needs includes walking, riding
motorcycles and bicycles and taking taxis, as
well as significant public transit patronage,
especially of Shanghai’s ubiquitous metro
system and its buses. However, an automobile culture is ingrained and growing. This
has strong ties to aspirational global consumerism, the consequence of China’s increasing embededness within the global economy
and Shanghai’s rapid urbanisation as it positions itself as a major global financial hub
(Column 1, Figure 1).
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
8
Urban Studies
This aspirational consumerism is also
modulated by strong elements of Chinese
culture that valorises hierarchy and face saving (as discussed in the introduction and
methodology), manifest in this case via car
consumption (Column 2, Figure 1). The tension between the forces of global consumerism and Chinese culture encourages
individuals to purchase cars for mostly symbolic reasons. We argue that this transport
culture, in which the automobile dominates
the imagination and aspirations of many,
impacts greatly on the ‘being’ and agency of
Shanghai residents for the following reasons:
it valorises car ownership as a symbol of
success and consequently creates a psychosocial pressure to purchase a car, but doesn’t
necessarily deliver on its promises of ‘freedom’ and self-satisfaction when the aggregate impact is that everyone is caught in a
traffic jam; it produces vast amounts of airborne pollution which diminishes the health
of Shanghai residents; it reinforces socioeconomic inequalities as non-car owners
often experience a sense of social exclusion;
and it disperses some individuals to the periphery of the city without sufficient infrastructure (Column 4, Figure 1). Practically
speaking, it does offer some people more
ready access to workplaces, allows parents
to transport children to schools and elderly
family members to medical treatment, offers
escape from the masses on Shanghai’s metro
and has the psycho-social impact (even if
subjective and perhaps ultimately fragile) of
affirming financial and personal success for
many (Column 4, Figure 1).
The most often cited reasons for owning
or aspiring to own a car were: status, the perceived freedom a car affords, convenience, to
avoid the overcrowded metro, to access
workplaces and to better look after one’s
children. Since China’s opening up in the late
1970s, the car has become an integral part of
the global consumer economy. In a consumer culture, specific commodities are used
to position oneself in the social hierarchy
(Williams, 2009). Featherstone (1991: 27)
argues, ‘within consumer culture there .
persist prestige economies, with scarce goods
demanding considerable investment in time,
money and knowledge to obtain, and handle
appropriately. Such goods can be read and
used to classify the status of their bearer’. In
China, as in many emerging economies, a
private car is such an item and is highly
prized by many as a symbol of economic
success.
Among our research participants, the perceived status of car ownership was highly
prevalent and expressed in a variety of ways.
Richard, a 29-year-old male university
administrator, who owns a Volkswagen, said
‘cars show you are rich . have a high position in society’. Ci Ci, a 30-year-old selfemployed Creative Director, also expressed
a similar sentiment. He said ‘Chinese people
are materialistic . they want to show they
have money, so they buy a car’.
Interestingly, however, Ci Ci, like several
others, did not seem to believe that the ubiquity of cars in Shanghai is a problem. This
suggests to us that cars are a normative phenomenon in the urban landscape to which
people have become inured. Frank, a 33year-old restaurant manager, offered insight
regarding this material culture. He explained
that the aspiration to own cars in Shanghai
reflected China’s stage of socio-economic
development. That is, the nation’s emergence from a rural past to a modern industrialised and increasingly service-based
economy produces the psycho-social desire
to express that material transition through
status consumption, especially the car.
Marco, a 38-year-old restaurant manager,
expressed a similar sentiment. He said:
because China is becoming rich, the people
don’t know what is important . they think
status like car is important. They think money
is the most important thing and a car will
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
improve their life. These people, for example
farmers’ children coming from the countryside
to Shanghai, need education to change their
mind / life. Then they will understand what is
the real happiness.
Indeed, similar research in Bangkok suggests
the same phenomenon is active there (see
Williams, 2009).
Mr. Peng is a successful businessman in
his 40s, who moved to Shanghai from
Hubei. He is married with one child. Mr.
Peng took out a loan to buy a BMW fourseat sedan and, together with his monthly
mortgage, is finding the repayments on his
car a financial stress and admits he may
have made a mistake. Asked then why he
bought such an expensive car, he replied,
‘It’s all about how others see you . I need a
good car so that when I go pick up my client
they would think of me as someone they can
trust. That goes the same way with my
daughter’s expensive school. We need to be
in the ‘‘club’’’. Ms. Zhao, a 29-year-old manager of a microloan company, owns a
‘shocking red’ Mercedes. She said, ‘For my
job, I need a nice car – there’s no question
about it – otherwise why would anyone trust
me and the ability to take care of their
assets?’. Jie is a 32-year-old Shanghainese
partner in an architectural company who
spent CNY80,000 to buy a license plate and
then CNY200,000 on a black Volkswagen.
Apart from wanting a car to transport his
architectural models around, Jie said ‘Social
status is another thing, and I can’t deny that,
but as a partner of a company like mine, the
clients would like to see something that somewhat shows and expresses the fact that you are
a ‘‘successful’’ businessman, and owning a nice
black car is one of them’. Outside of work,
however, he rarely uses his car as he lives with
his parents in the city centre and relies on taxis
and the metro. Apparently the expense of his
car purchase is justified by the status it confers
in his professional life.
9
These comments suggest two forces at
play: Shanghai’s exploding (global) consumer culture (Column 1, Figure 1), over
the past 15 years especially, exhorts individuals to display their growing wealth via
aspirational purchases, chief amongst them
the automobile. This is reinforced by the
Chinese cultural elements of ‘face’ and hierarchy (Column 2, Figure 1), which in a consumer culture also find expression in status
purchases. Several research participants
made
a
distinction
between
local
Shanghainese and those who moved to
Shanghai from other parts of China. For
example, Larry, a 32-year-old Educational
Coordinator at a local university, who owns
a BMW, runs a BMW club and exhibits car
fetishism, said that Shanghai continues to
experience a vast and rapid process of urbanisation, drawing countless outsiders to the
city seeking a better life, i.e. material success.
Often, he said, these people are less educated
and imbue the automobile with more status
than local Shanghainese. Their struggle for
financial success may be greater, thus
strengthening what we term the ‘psychosocial desire’ to signify it through aspirational consumption. Again, this phenomenon has been noted in similar research in
Bangkok (see Williams, 2009).
Another manifestation of status is the
phenomenon of parents in China buying
cars for their children as wedding or graduation gifts. Jeffrey is a 30-year-old divorced
Shanghainese bar manager and father of a
small child. Jeffrey has owned one car in his
life, and only for the one year he was married. Although he has never held a driver’s
license, Jeffrey’s father bought him a car as
a wedding gift. Both he and his wife already
had apartments, and in Shanghai culture a
car completes the package. In fact, when
Jeffrey was a teenager, his father told him
that as a man he needed to get a driver’s
license and a car. Without a car or an apartment, his father warned, Jeffrey could not
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
10
Urban Studies
find a girl. Jeffrey gave the car to his ex-wife
when they divorced, but his father still hopes
Jeffrey will ‘grow up’ and buy a car in the
future. The social construction of masculinity around car ownership is, of course, pervasive across cultures (see Williams, 2009).
The comments of the interviewees above
confirm that in a global consumer culture,
identities are penetrated by consumerism,
which has increasingly replaced traditional
signifiers of identity such as religion, ethnicity and nation. This phenomenon has been
extensively covered in the literature on consumerism (e.g. Chua, 2000; Garcı́a
Canclini, 2001; Jayne, 2006; Miles, 2004;
Zukin and Maguire, 2004). The consumption of mobility, especially, has always been
glamorised in global advertising. Cohen
and Gössling (2015: 2) discuss hypermobility in modern society and point out that
‘the high social status associated with frequent corporeal mobility in some more privileged societies, specifically by air and
road, is at least partly attributable to its
glamorization in the media and other forms
of public discourse’. Global advertising has
constructed personas of successful and
attractive people whose identity is anchored
in the ownership of a particular automobile
brand. Mr. Ren, for example, is a very successful 60-year-old Shanghainese owner of
a technology company who has risen from
very humble beginnings to significant
wealth as a result of taking a risk in the
newly emerging stock market in Shanghai
the early 1990s. He decided to buy a
Mercedes, he said, because he ‘deserves luxury’ after all his hard work. Mr. Ren is the
quintessential sophisticated Mercedes persona whose success in business confers him
the privilege and right to pamper himself
with a car that demonstrates his wealth.
Advertising, needless to say, has always
constructed car ownership as a symbol of
freedom, especially a kind of privileged freedom for those with the financial means to
purchase an automobile. For example,
Larry,
the
32-year-old
Educational
Coordinator and BMW owner referred to
earlier, said ‘I feel myself is the car . I feel
free . I can be the master .. I know all the
roads. It’s a pure joy’. Similarly, Grapp, a
34-year-old game engineer and member of
Larry’s BMW club, said he ‘feels freedom
and power’ when driving his car. This sense
of freedom is often, especially for men,
bound up with the sense of a man-machine
fully customised to express the owner’s identity. ‘Personalized cars reduce mental and
corporeal insecurities and anxieties creating
spaces of man-machine co-existence to
which drivers become emotionally attached’
(Cohen and Gössling, 2015: 5). The reality,
however, is often a lack of freedom when
the impulse to buy freedom and status clogs
the roads with too many cars and causes
routine traffic jams. Larry, for example,
simultaneously acknowledged the increasingly egregious nature of Shanghai’s traffic
jams, in which he frequently gets caught on
his 50 km round trip journey to work. As
Montgomery (2013: 184) points out:
. cars fail to deliver the experience of freedom and speed that we all know they are
capable of bestowing in a world of open
roads. The urban system neutralises their
power. Luxury and sports cars might still offer
their drivers a status bump, but the car’s muscles cease to matter when it is surrounded by
other cars.
Our findings on the symbolic resonance
of the car in Shanghai are supported by Zhu
et al. (2012). The researchers conducted a
questionnaire survey of 563 university students at Fudan University in Shanghai and
at Jiangsu University in nearby Jiangsu
Province. As a social cohort more likely
than their less-educated peers to have the
income to purchase cars in the future, these
university students represent a very useful
analytical sample. The authors concluded:
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
there is a strong planned intention of car ownership among Chinese college students. The
desire for car ownership becomes present at a
relatively early age when purchasing power is
still absent, indicating that the car has become
deeply ingrained within the Chinese consumer
imagination. (Zhu et al., 2012: 318)
The authors point out that the symbolic
value accorded cars by this generation will
very likely drive future car ownership rates,
and that there exists a strong normative
expectation that everyone should own a car
in the future. In fact, 58% of the students
surveyed either agreed or strongly agreed
that owning a car ‘would be a necessity in
the future’ (Zhu et al., 2012: 320–321).
Several of our own research participants
imagined life would be better in the future
when they could afford a car. For example,
Hu, a 19-year-old waitress who relies on a
motor scooter to get around Shanghai, said
that ‘everything will be better in the future’
when she has the money to buy a car. Frank,
a 30-year-old café manager, said ‘In China,
many people want to own car as family
didn’t have car in the past . they think life
is better with car’. Besides the desire to purchase what was previously unattainable for
many Chinese people, especially such a visible symbol as the car, many people project
themselves forward into an imagined future
made better by owning a car. While the
authors of the survey group above also note
the practical benefits of car ownership, they
ultimately conclude that the embedded norm
of expected car ownership among the young
means that the automobile is much more
than a practical means to get around the city
for Chinese people. It is richly affective and
symbolic. In order to diminish this car culture in the future, the authors suggest that,
apart from continued investment in public
transportation, measures are required to
diminish the psychosocial valuation granted
cars in the minds of young Chinese people.
11
One of the most egregious impacts of
Shanghai’s car culture is air pollution (The
Economist, 2015a; Shanghai Daily, 2013).
The main airborne pollutants emitted by
cars include nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon
dioxide (CO2), hydrocarbons (HC) and suspended particulate matter, commonly
known as PM2.5 (Zhu et al., 2012: 321).
Levels of PM2.5 frequently reach unhealthy,
and occasionally hazardous, levels in
Shanghai. Air pollution is a serious public
health issue and is associated with respiratory disorders, the aggravation of heart disease and cancer (Poboon, 1997). All of the
research participants agreed that Shanghai’s
air quality is a problem. They attributed it
to cars, but also to factories. When questioned about how to control the car culture
to reduce pollution and generally improve
the urban environment, many research participants demonstrated little agency. That is,
they seemed reluctantly accepting of the car
culture’s impact and had often not imagined
how it could be controlled. They rarely had
suggestions for how to control car ownership or usage, and many were not aware of
measures to do so in other global cities such
as Singapore and London. Singapore is an
exemplar, well known for two major instruments to control automobile ownership and
usage: the Certificate of Entitlement (or
COE) which is a license that people need to
bid for in order to purchase a car, and ERP
(Electronic Road Pricing), a system of congestion charging whereby vehicles are automatically charged for using roads at specific
times and locations. In 2013, London also
introduced a congestion charge on vehicles
entering the city centre, with considerable
success. Shanghai’s registration plate auction is similar to the Singaporean COE. In
1986, Shanghai was the first city in China to
introduce the license plate bidding system.
Eight thousand to 9000 license plates are
issued at monthly auctions. Plates cost
between CNY72,600 and CNY135,677.
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
12
Urban Studies
Recently, the success rate has been less than
5%. This has spawned the growth of a new
business in which prospective car owners
hire companies to bid on their behalf for a
nominal fee roughly equivalent to 10% of
the license plate cost (Shanghai Statistical
Bureau, as cited in Lu, 2014).
When we offered the measures of
Singapore and London as examples for
Shanghai to follow, the research participants
generally agreed, but often with limited
enthusiasm. Some expressed an air of resignation as though automobility is inevitable
and normative. A few even said that car
ownership and the freedom to use one’s car
at any time one chooses, and free of charge,
is an individual right. For example, Richard,
a 36-year-old Educational Counselor at a
local university doesn’t own a car and
doesn’t necessarily want to, but said that the
high cost of license plates in Shanghai is
unfair because ‘it’s people’s right to own a
car’. Frank is a cosmopolitan 33-year-old
manager of an Italian restaurant. He doesn’t
own a car and relies on his motor scooter to
get around central Shanghai, where he lives.
Frank is aware of the controls used in
Singapore and London but says ‘they are
not fair as people should be able to drive
their car where they want, when they want’,
and so is not in favour of their introduction
in Shanghai. He also disagrees with the system sometimes used in Beijing, which alternates car usage according to the odd or even
number of the license plate. ‘Anyway’, he
said, ‘some Chinese people are so rich that
they just buy two cars with both an odd and
even number plate, so they can drive every
day’.
A very common thread in conversations
with car owners was that they would find it
hard or impossible to either give up their
cars or to use them less, as they had already
got used to them. While they recognised the
benefits to the environment if they did so,
short-term personal interests prevailed over
collective interests. Larry, the 32-year-old
Educational Coordinator referred to earlier,
said that if he lived in the centre of Shanghai
(currently he lives in a distant residential
area in the newly developed area of Pudong),
he might use his car less and use a bicycle for
some trips. He admitted that ‘it’s hard
because once you have a car, it’s kind of an
addiction’. This same sentiment was echoed
by a number of others, including Richard
Qiu, a 29-year-old Educational Counselor,
who said ‘After I bought a car, I think I
became a bit lazy . I don’t want to take the
bus and the metro is too noisy, crowded,
busy .. It’s difficult to give up a car’. While
individuals acknowledged the benefits to the
environment and the urban amenity of
Shanghai if there were fewer cars on the
road, the impulse to change their lifestyle for
a collective and intangible goal was very limited. As Steg and Gifford (2005: 61) point
out, ‘Improvements in collective qualities of
life, as attempted through sustainable transport, may conflict with individual short-term
interests, especially when individuals must
adapt their lifestyles in order to reach the
sustainability goals’.
In sum, we found a sense of impotence
regarding the growth of the car culture, a
perception that cars and their associated pollution are the norm and sometimes a contradictory impulse to not stand in the way of
car ownership or usage in spite of the pollution and congestion they cause. After all is
said and done, our research also suggests
that it would be misleading to ignore the
practical benefits of cars altogether. In many
cases in Shanghai, cars serve as the only
means of transportation, especially for the
residents who live in the outer suburbs of
the city – often because they do not have the
financial means to live closer to the city centre – where the metro network has yet to
connect them to the important service nodes.
We found that people rely on cars to get to
work between nodes yet to be connected by
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
public transportation, to drive a child to
school located off the transportation grid, to
purchase food and household products from
a mall or to transport elder members of the
family to medical treatment. The sale of land
rights to real estate developers, especially in
the suburbs where there is still room for
growth by the local government, has undergirded a specific pattern of urbanisation in
major Chinese cities for almost two decades
(Himanen et al., 2008: 187), forcing cities,
especially our case study Shanghai, to
develop in a concentric fashion. The centre
of the concentric structure is where the most
artificially priced land can be found, based
on the demand of the upper middle class
residents.
Conclusions
In this paper, we have deliberately chosen to
investigate Shanghai’s transport as a cultural
phenomenon. We have found that while
Shanghai’s transport culture includes the
world’s most extensive metro, private car
ownership dominates the aspirations and
imaginations of our interviewees. As such,
we identified a culturally, materially and
socially embedded car culture, which continues to grow steadily. This transport culture
has created what Garrett Hardin (1968)
refers to as the ‘tragedy of the commons’, a
theory which argues that the aggregate
impact of many individuals acting in their
own self-interest can be the destruction of a
common system or resource base. In this
case, when the residents of Shanghai exercise
their right to car ownership, the cumulative
impact (many cars on the road) either
destroys the system for all, or diminishes its
benefits. Instead of ‘freedom’, there are perpetual traffic jams, poor air quality and the
social exclusion of individuals who cannot
afford cars. The system becomes environmentally and socially unsustainable.
13
Literature on urban sustainability recognises that if economics is concerned with
maximising human happiness or social welfare, then auto-centric transport systems
need to be replaced by sustainable mass transit. As Litman (2003) points out:
Sustainability requires maximizing the social
welfare provided by material resource consumption .. Some factors that help increase
more efficient and sustainable transport can
increase people’s quality of life and happiness
(Steg and Gifford 2005). For example, reducing automobile travel and increasing walking
and cycling tend to increase fitness and health,
and increase equity.
Shanghai has invested greatly in the metro,
yet the dream of car ownership is ingrained
and normative. This study reminds us then
that transport choices are more than utilitarian. People continue to aspire to car ownership for symbolic reasons.
We have argued that while this transport
culture enables some important routine functions in daily life (see Column 4, Figure 1), it
has many negative impacts on the being and
sense of agency of Shanghai residents (see
Column 4, Figure 1). Ultimately, the system
constricts their agency to determine mobility
that raises their social welfare, and the collective social welfare.
Finally, we argue that the burgeoning car
culture in Shanghai needs to be understood
and addressed also as a cultural phenomenon. The driver at the wheel in Shanghai is
also a consumer who sees his/her car as a
cultural touchstone, symbolising his/her
material success. As the authorities continue
to invest in the Shanghai metro and mass
transit in general, they should also invest in
bicycle infrastructure. Yet more than this is
required, as our findings suggest. The resilient symbolism of the automobile itself needs
to be targeted and displaced, and the symbolic appeal of mass transit and cycling
needs to be raised. Cars have many practical
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
14
Urban Studies
functions and enable the iterative performance of quotidian routines, as we have
found above. Yet, in the interests of social
sustainability, global warming and public
health, mobility can no longer find status
and respect in private automobility alone. In
many cities, such as Bogota and Paris, the
car is pulling into the curb and making way
for a more soft-edged and sustainable form
of ‘cool’, healthy and environmentallyconscious mobility: mass transit, cycling and
walking. As Shanghai’s burgeoning wealth
draws people into cars, it is urgent that
authorities understand automobility as a
cultural phenomenon and act to de-market
the private automobile and raise the status
of mass transit and cycling. Therein lies the
possibility of agency.
In addition, the license plate bidding system
in Shanghai may appear justifiable as a way to
disincentivise prospective drivers from adding
more private vehicles to the already congested
roads. However, there is also an element of
what the anthropologist Paul Farmer (2006:
1686) would call ‘structural violence’ against a
certain class of people who actually need automobiles. In other words, the issuing of additional license plates should not be determined
by how much money individuals who wish to
drive are able to use in the bidding process,
but should instead be determined by an individual’s need for possessing a private vehicle.
For a parcel messenger, a moving service or a
taxi driver, a car would mean a job and an
income; therefore, they should have the right
to possess this important tool central to their
profession, as opposed to having to compete in
an unwinnable bidding competition with prospective drivers who have more money to bid
for license plates. If suburbanisation continues
to operate as the city’s main planning program, the lower middle class who can only
afford to buy or rent houses on the outskirts
of the city with its much less advanced infrastructure should perhaps also be given priority
in possessing private vehicles in order to commute to work, send their children to school
and so on. This structural violence – both by
definition and by design – entails economic,
political and legal social structures that stop
individuals, groups and societies from reaching
their full potential. That is to say, the suburbanisation of the low wage class and this form of
structural violence has a profound impact on
the agency – or the lack thereof – of the lower
middle class.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers whose comments have constructively shaped the paper. We would also like to
thank our 100 informants for providing us the
much needed ethnographic data central to our
research methodology. Finally, we have benefited
from discussions with Kevin Beier, Magnus
Fiskesjo, Matthew Gutmann, Michael Herzfeld,
Catherine Lutz and Leo Pang.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any
funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.
References
Barmé GR (2002) Engines of revolution: Car
cultures in China. In: Wollen P and Joe Kerr J
(eds) Autopia: Cars and Culture. London:
Reaktion books, pp. 177–190.
Bryman A (2001) Social Research Methods. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press.
Chen X (2009) Shanghai Rising: State Power and
Local Transformations in a Global Megacity.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press.
China Association of Automobile Manufacturers
(CAAM) ( 2014) The production and sales of
passenger cars enjoyed a slight growth on
yearly basis (Automotive Statistics). Available
at: http://www.caam.org.cn/english/newslist/
a101-1.html (accessed 1 May 2015).
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
Williams and Arkaraprasertkul
China Daily Online (2014) Shanghai’s permanent
population exceeds 24 million. China Daily
Online. Available at: http://www.chinadaily.
com.cn/china/2014-02/27/content_17311272.htm.
Chua BH (ed.) (2000) Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities. London and New York:
Routledge.
Cohen SA and Gössling S (2015) A darker side of
hypermobility. Environment and Planning.
DOI: 0308518X15597124.
Dargay J, Gately D and Sommer M (2007) Vehicle Ownership and Income Growth, Worldwide:
1960–2030.
David M (2004) Social Research: The Basics /
Matthew David and Carole D. Sutton. London:
SAGE Publications.
den Hartog H (ed.) (2010) Shanghai New Towns:
Searching For Community and Identity in a
Sprawling Metropolis. Rotterdam: 010
Publishers.
Denzin NK and Lincoln YS (2005) The SAGE
Handbook of Qualitative Research. (3rd ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
The Economist (2013) The cost of driving: Where
is the most expensive place to own a car?
Available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/
graphicdetail/2013/04/daily-chart-2.
The Economist (2015a) The cost of clean air.
Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/
china/21642214-measures-combat-air-pollutionare-biting-hard-industrial-areas-already-hiteconomic.
The Economist (2015b) Shanghai’s economy:
GDP apostasy. Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21641282-chinas-biggestcity-leads-way-jettisoning-its-annual-target-gdpapostasy.
Farmer PE, Nizeye B, Stulac S, et al. (2006) Structural violence and clinical medicine. PLoS
Medicine 3(10): e449.
Featherstone M (1991) Consumer Culture and
Postmodernism. London and Newbury Park,
CA: SAGE Publications.
Featherstone M (2004) Automobilities: An introduction. Theory, Culture & Society 21(4–5): 1–24.
Freund P and Martin G (1996) The commodity
that is eating the world: The automobile, the
environment, and capitalism. Capitalism
Nature Socialism 7(4): 3–29.
15
Garcı́a Canclini N (2001) Consumers and Citizens:
Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Hardin G (1968) The tragedy of the commons.
Science 162(3859): 1243–1248.
Harvey D (2008) The right to the city. New Left
Review 253: 23–40.
Hessler P (2010) Country Driving: A Journey
Through China From Farm To Factory. New
York: Harper.
Himanen V, Lee-Gosselin M and Perrels A (2008)
Building Blocks for Sustainable Transport:
Obstacles, Trends, Solutions. Bingley, UK:
Emerald Publishers.
Jayne M (2006) Cities and Consumption. London
and New York: Routledge.
Karkaria B (2014) Mumbai is on the verge of
imploding. The Guardian. Available at: http://
www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/nov/24/
mumbai-verge-imploding-polluted-megacity.
Kharas H and Gertz G (2010) The new global
middle class: A cross-over from West to East.
In: Li C (ed) Defining the middle class: an absolute approach. Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 1–14.
Kopytoff I (1986) The cultural biography of
things: Commoditization as process. In: Appadurai A (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 64–94.
Litman T (2003) Integrating public health objectives in transportation decision-making. American Journal of Health Promotion 18(1): 103–108.
Lu N (2014) Shanghai car license plate bid success
rate hits new low. Shanghaidaily.com. Available at: http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/auto/Shanghai-car-license-plate-bid-success-rate-hits-new-low/shdaily.shtml.
Lutz C and Fernandez AL (2010) Carjacked: The
Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect On Our
Lives. (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
McMichael P (2009) A food regime analysis of
the ‘world food crisis’. Agriculture and Human
Values 26(4): 281–295.
Miles S (2004) Consuming Cities. Houndmills and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016
16
Urban Studies
Miller D (2001) Car Cultures. Oxford, UK: Berg
Publishers.
Montgomery C (2013) Happy City: Transforming
Our Lives Through Urban Design. (1st ed.).
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Myers N and Kent J (2003) New consumers: The
influence of affluence on the environment.
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 100(8): 4963–4968.
Poboon C (1997) Anatomy of a traffic disaster:
Towards a sustainable solution to Bangkok’s
transport problems. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, Australia. Available at: http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/view/author/
Poboon,Chamlong.html.
Railway Gazette (2010) Shanghai now the world’s
longest metro. Railway Gazette. Available at:
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/
view/shanghai-now-the-worlds-longest-metro.
html.
Shanghai Daily (2013) China says air pollution
affecting physical, mental health of citizens.
Available at: http://www.shanghaidaily.com/
national/China-says-air-pollution-affectingphysical-mental-health-of-citizens/shdaily.shtml.
Sheller M (2004) Automotive emotions feeling the
car. Theory, Culture & Society 21(4–5): 221–242.
Sheller M and Urry J (2000) The city and the car.
International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 24(4): 737–757.
Sheller M and Urry J (2006) The new mobilities
paradigm. Environment and Planning A 38(2):
207–226. Available at: http://www.envplan.
com/abstract.cgi?id=a37268.
Smart A and Zhang L (2006) From the mountains and the fields: The urban transition in
the anthropology of China. China Information
20: 481–518.
Steg L and Gifford R (2005) Sustainable transportation and quality of life. Journal of Transport Geography 13(1): 59–69.
Swanson A (2015) How the NYC subway
compares to London, Tokyo and Shanghai.
Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.
com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/30/how-thenyc-subway-compares-to-london-tokyo-andshanghai/.
Townsend C (2003) In whose interest? A critical
approach to Southeast Asia’s urban transport
dynamic. PhD thesis, Murdoch University,
Australia.
Urry J (2006) Inhabiting the car. The Sociological
Review 54(s1): 17–31.
Wank DL (1996) The institutional process of
market clientelism: Guanxi and private
business in a south China city. The China
Quarterly 147: 820–838. Available at: http://
www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/
stable/pdfplus/655377.pdf.
Williams M (2009) Cars and car crashes in the city
of angels: Bangkok’s unhealthy collision with
cultural capitalism. PhD thesis, Australian
National University, Australia.
Yan Y (1996) The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and
Social Networks in a Chinese Village. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Yang MM-h (1994) Gifts, Favors, and Banquets:
The Art of Social Relationships in China.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Zhang J (2009) Driving toward modernity: An ethnography of automobiles in contemporary South
China. PhD thesis, Yale University, USA.
Zhu C, Zhu Y, Lu R, et al. (2012) Perceptions
and aspirations for car ownership among Chinese students attending two universities in the
Yangtze Delta, China. Journal of Transport
Geography 24(0): 315–323.
Zukin S and Maguire JS (2004) Consumers and
Consumption. Annual Review of Sociology 30:
173–197.
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at Bobst Library, New York University on April 5, 2016